


Ruthless

by kheradihr



Series: Scrapbook [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, between ME1 & ME2, canon death but i still tagged that so no one is completely surprised, introspection of the dying kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 17:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8498395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kheradihr/pseuds/kheradihr
Summary: She's dying -- not dying how she expected but still dying -- and all she can do is make sure her crew survived. She was ruthless like that.





	

     They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. For Artemis Shepard, as she fell through space and into the nearby planet's gravity well, her thoughts were on reconnecting her O2 and comm lines so she could continue to yell at Joker for being stubborn. The Normandy was gone, she wouldn't add his name to her growing list of her gang lost. Her gang. No Tenth Street Reds, but more. Hers. Alarms blared in her ears telling her her suit was depressurizing, that she entered the upper atmosphere eighteen seconds ago, that communication with the Normandy was lost, that her suit's temperature regulators were inoperable. She didn't have time to think about her mistakes and few regrets because she was counting escape pods, ticking off crew by the launch trajectory.

     Tali and Adams got engineering out, all of them crammed into two pods since Wrex was so large and so temperamental no one was willing to share one with him. A favorite threat of Adams' was assigning the crew member in question to Wrex's pod. Any time that threat was in Wrex's presence he'd lick his chops and wonder aloud if human bones were digestible. Shepard hoped Tali remembered to bring the geth data with her to end her Pilgrimage. At least one of her girls deserved to go home to the family waiting. Sending that message to Ash's family _hurt._ Kaidan would get everyone on the crew decks moving, giving any dawdlers a biotic push in the right direction. He was surprisingly solid in that.

     Chakwas had been on one of the first pods launched; her knowledge and expertise would ensure the survivors continued to survive. Garrus and Liara were on the last pods launched; her secondaries, first to volunteer for something insane and the last to get on the escape pods. For a moment, Shepard was grateful it was Liara she saw last. Garrus was a soldier and wouldn't hesitate too long to get out. Liara, asari Goddess bless her, would've waited for Shepard too long without a push to go.

     Maybe Tali was right, a ship and its crew was a family. Hers on the Normandy was more of a gang though, a gathering of friends or distant relatives that had more than familial ties keeping them together. They had blood. Blood spent, blood scattered, blood shared. That made them more.

     The Normandy shattered and the attacking ship vanished, leaving nothing but stars and starlike objects burning brightly in Shepard's fading vision. Her emergency oxygen was gone. Her breath, thin and shallow, crystallized on the inside of her helmet adding an otherworldly glow to the vanishing pods. Her omnitool told her that her orbit in the upper atmosphere would degrade in 132 hours and counting. Her radar held nothing, her comms just the white noise of a disconnected line. The Normandy was gone. Her crew — what was left — was safe. As a commanding officer, having soldiers survive was always heartening, even for her. Her lips quirked upwards slowly, facial muscles sluggish with delayed synapses. Her critics in the Alliance would shit themselves when they heard about how she died. Shouting down an asari and saving the crippled pilot. They called her ruthless, a heartless bitch, especially after Torfan. What they didn't understand was that she could be just as ruthless about saving someone as she was about sending others to die doing their job. Her gang? For an orphan like her, they were her family. It was always worth it to save as many as she could.

     That thought was her last for two years and twelve days.


End file.
